Student housing sees impressive pre-lease season for fall 2022.
The pre-lease season at colleges has rebounded to pre-pandemic numbers. According to RealPage, nearly a third of beds at 175 universities were leased for fall 2022 as of December 2021. At 31.5%, the rate is just shy of the December 2020 rate of 31.7%.
“In other words, pre-leasing now tracks in-line with pre-pandemic norms. This is another welcomed sign for the industry that COVID-19 effects are largely in the rearview for student housing,” according to RealPage.
In November 2021, only about 19% of beds at the 175 universities tracked by RealPage were leased. And, nearly 20 colleges are leased at 50% or higher, twice as many schools as December 2020 and similar to the December 2019 rate.
However, rent change has shifted, reaching 3.1% as of December, well above the 0.2% rent change from a year ago and twice as much as the annual effective rent growth in December 2018 and 2019.
“The strongest rent growth is largely coming from schools that are catching up after being hard hit by COVID-19 over the last year or two, so that is impacting overall results. That said, about a third of beds in the RealPage 175 are spoken for – and at some of the highest rent growth on record.”